08 November 2011

what's better than a brownie? a browning with a whole fucking oreo shoved right in there. you should have heard the rationalizing that my co-workers were doing to justify eating one of these. #youknowyouaregoingtoeaton #justenjoyit

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Joe Paterno’s tenure as coach of the Penn State football team will soon be over, perhaps within days or weeks, in the wake of a sex-abuse scandal that has implicated university officials, according to two people briefed on conversations among the university’s top officials.

The board of trustees has yet to determine the precise timing of Paterno’s exit, but it is clear that the man who has more victories than any other coach at college football’s top level and who made Penn State a prestigious national brand will not survive to coach another season. (via)

thx libby!

here's an interview with a sports journalist lady from YES who attended penn state and has covered their football program. interesting insight.

The architect of 1 World Trade Center has finally devised a way to clad the concrete base of the tower in shimmery glass. The breakthrough comes after technical problems forced designers to abandon an earlier glass-sheathing plan last spring, sources said.

Architect David Childs had wanted to encase the 185-foot-tall base in prismatic glass panels to disguise the thick, windowless fortified concrete that is one of the tower's signature safety elements. The idea was to have it not look like a bunker. The massive concrete base means that office space in the 1,776-foot tower doesn't start until the 20th floor. The challenge then was to create a facade that suggested movement, life and light where none existed. However, the panels of prismatic glass, which were designed to reflect light, were not only difficult to make: As it turned out, they also shattered easily.

Now, sources said the base will be covered with glass louvers that are set at different angles on the base and lit from behind, creating an inviting atmosphere that would also reflect the nearby memorial honoring the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks. The glass is treated so it would pebble instead of shatter in case of an explosion, much like a car windshield does in a severe accident.

"DENVER — Federal regulators on Monday approved a $50 million
installation of anchored fabric over the Arkansas River in southern
Colorado by the artist Christo, whose larger-than-life vision has
divided environmentalists, residents and politicians for years over
questions of aesthetics, nature and economic impact.The project,
“Over the River,” will include eight suspended panel segments totaling
5.9 miles along a 42-mile stretch of the river, about three hours
southwest of Denver. Construction could begin next year, pending final
local approvals, with the goal being a two-week display of the work as
early as August 2014." from nyt

ive been obsessing over this song recently. its like how you can make pancake batter into waffles and totally change it but it is still awesome. also, did you know jake shears from the scissor sisters wrote it?

this track is from drake's new album. did you know that drake and ricky rossy are working on a together-project?

In an interview with XXL, Drake says that a collaborative mixtape with Rick Ross is next on his plate now that he's finished with Take Care. It'll be called Y.O.L.O., after his beloved motto, "you only live once." Work on the mixtape has been stalled a bit because of Ross' recent health problems, however. (via)

she actually doesn't conduct this fresh air interview, but you know! i just listened to this episode from last week, and found the guest to be really fascinating:

In 1985, David M. Kennedy visited Nickerson Gardens, a public housing complex in south-central Los Angeles. It was the beginning of the crack epidemic, and Nickerson Gardens was located in what was then one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in America.

"It was like watching time-lapse photography of the end of the world," he says. "There were drug crews on the corner, there were crack monsters and heroin addicts wandering around. ... It was fantastically, almost-impossibly-to-take-in awful."

Kennedy, a self-taught criminologist, had a visceral reaction to Nickerson Gardens. In his memoir Don't Shoot, he writes that he thought: "This is not OK. People should not have to live like this. This is wrong. Somebody needs to do something."

Kennedy has devoted his career to reducing gang and drug-related inner-city violence. He started going to drug markets all over the United States, met with police officials and attorney generals, and developed a program — first piloted in Boston — that dramatically reduced youth homicide rates by as much as 66 percent. That program, nicknamed the "Boston Miracle," has been implemented in more than 70 cities nationwide. (via)

i thought he said "knickers in gardens". worth a listen, if you have time.

Drafted last year by the Broncos, he played sparingly his rookie season. Now, his struggles to adapt to the N.F.L. have changed the tenor of the debate around him, made it nastier, more personal, more intense. Supporters have reacted to criticism of Tebow as an indictment on religion, while detractors seem to delight in every wayward pass....As vice president at Nielsen Sports, Stephen Master measures an athlete’s endorsement potential based on awareness and appeal. Nationally, the company tested Tebow after the draft in 2010 and again before this season. Coming out of college, Tebow recorded an N-score of 141, “an incredible rating,” Master said, “M.V.P.-like.”

In the second test, Tebow’s N-score fell to a 41, which still ranks high. His positive appeal, though, dropped to 76 percent from 85 percent, while his negative appeal increased to 24 percent from 15 percent. Under negative appeal comments, responders wrote “overrated” and “annoying” and “overexposed” and “religious nut job.”

“There’s always a religious component there,” said Howell Scott, an evangelical blogger and pastor at a Baptist church in New Mexico. “And with Tebow, it’s often an anti-Christian bias. People want him to fall flat on his face.”

Scott refers to this as Tebow Derangement Syndrome, which his blog defined as “the acute onset of mockery and verbal ‘hatred’ in otherwise normal people in reaction to the football prowess and play — nay — the very existence of Tim Tebow.” (via)